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UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 

CITY OF NEW YORK 



INAUGURATION 



Rev. Thomas S. Hastings, D.D. 



PROFESSOR OF SACRED RHETORIC 



Thursday, September 22, 1881 



PUBLISHED FOR THE DIRECTORS 



NEW YORK 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY 



1° 



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NEW YORK PUBL. £Mr, 
IN EXCHANGS, 



INTRODUCTORY. 



By the death of the Rev. William Adams, D.D., LL.D., on the 
last day of August, 1880, the Union Theological Seminary, which 
he helped to found, and had done so much to adorn and 
strengthen, lost one of its oldest Directors, its President, and its 
Professor of Sacred Rhetoric. The last two of these three offices 
he had held for seven years, rendering services of inestimable 
value. 

On the 9th day of November, 1880, the first two vacancies 
were filled by the. election of the Rev. Roswell D. Hitchcock, 
D.D., LL.D., who had been for twenty-five years Professor of 
Church History, and who retains his Chair of instruction, the 
Presidency having no prescribed connection with any particular 
Professorship. The Chair of Sacred Rhetoric was left vacant, 
Professor James M. Hoppin, D.D., of Yale College, assuming 
temporary charge of the department. On the nth of January, 
1 88 1, choice was made of the Rev. Thomas Samuel Hastings, 
D.D., an alumnus of the Seminary, who graduated in 1851, and, 
for five and twenty years, had been the pastor of the West Presby- 
terian Church in New York City. 

The inauguration of Dr. Hastings took place in the Chapel of 
the Seminary, on Thursday afternoon, September 22d, 1881, Dr. 
Hitchcock presiding. Service began with the singing of the 
hymn, " I love Thy Kingdom, Lord," and the reading of select 
portions of Scripture suited to the occasion. Prayer was offered 
by the Rev. Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D. Dr. Hitchcock spoke 
briefly of the great national affliction (the death of President 



4 Introductory. 

Garfield), in the shadow of which the term was opening. Ten- 
der reference was also made to the shadow cast upon the Semi- 
nary by the death of its President the year before. An unex- 
pectedly large accession of students was reported ; the alumni 
and other friends of the Seminary were congratulated on its hope- 
ful condition, and the new Professor was welcomed cordially to 
his Chair. The required doctrinal declaration was read and 
subscribed in the presence of the assembly which filled the 
Chapel. The usual charge, on behalf of the Board of Directors, 
was given by the Rev. Marvin R. Vincent, D.D., pastor of the 
Church of the Covenant in New York City. Dr. Hastings then 
delivered his Inaugural Address. The Benediction was pro- 
nounced by the Rev. Alexander T. McGill, D.D., LL.D., Senior 
Professor in the Theological Seminary at -Princeton, N. J. 



CHARGE ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD 
OF DIRECTORS. 



Rev. MARVIN R. VINCENT, D.D. 



CHARGE, 



My Dear Brother: 

In the attempt to discharge the duty assigned me by 
the Board of Directors, I find myself between two currents 
of feeling. As a director of the Seminary I share the 
satisfaction and pleasure of the entire Board at your 
decision to accept their call to this important post, and 
their high expectations of the results of its occupancy by 
you. On the other hand, I am a pastor. You are passing 
out of the pastoral circle where you have filled so large and 
so honorable a place, where we pastors have worked with 
you, have leaned upon your judgment and experience, and 
have loved you as a friend and brother. We shall sorely 
miss you there, and we can comfort ourselves only with the 
thought that you will not be entirely removed from our 
councils, and that, in a different way, you will still be 
co-operating with us for the advancement of the work to 
which you have given your life. 

You assume this position by the unanimous and hearty 
vote of the Board of Directors. You are no compromise 
candidate. The Board has been a unit in its desire, no less 
than its vote. You come with our unreserved confidence. 
There is no lurking suspicion, no secret misgiving as 
regards your orthodoxy or your fitness for the duties of 
this chair. 

While you thus command our confidence, we, on the 
other hand, are pledged to stand by you in the discharge of 
your duties, and in the development of your department of 
instruction ; to hear with respectful attention your sugges- 
tions for its increased efficiency, and to furnish you, so far 



8 Charge. 

as in us lies, whatever may be necessary to carry out your 
plans. Alike as laymen and as ministers, holding by the 
old and high Presbyterian estimate of the relative position 
and importance of the pulpit among Gospel agencies, our 
prayers, our sympathies, and our practical aid shall be with 
you, as you shall teach the ministers of the future how to 
wield in the pulpit the weapons of exegesis, theology, and 
history forged in the lecture-rooms of your colleagues. 

You do not need to be reminded that associations and 
memories of no ordinary kind are linked with your position 
here. The sense of loss which is yet fresh in your heart as 
in ours, is its own reminder of him who, by his broad and 
elegant culture, no less than by his delightful personal 
qualities, and his long, brilliant, and legitimate success as 
preacher, pastor, and teacher, gave to this chair a dignity 
and a meaning which none will be readier to recognize, or 
more earnest to perpetuate, than yourself. 

Nevertheless, you will be expected to do more than 
merely to keep the track laid by any man, however good, 
or great, or honored. We have not summoned you to 
reproduce mechanically the methods of your predecessor. 
The traditions attaching to your chair are not thongs to 
fetter you, but only inspirations to stimulate you. You 
are not as an engine set to a certain gauge, and condemned 
to keep to it on penalty of confusion and disaster. A 
department like yours, which deals with the contact of the 
living teacher and the living hearer, must be informed with 
a life, and not propelled by a machine. If there is to go 
forth from your lecture-room power that shall be felt in 
the pulpit of the future, it must pass to your students 
through your individual life, taking tone from your own 
character, and from the truth wrought up into it. You 
will not be content, therefore, with filling a place, however 
well ; you will make a place of your own ; you will inaugu- 
rate a growth as well as dress, and keep the garden. The 
science of preaching, like all science, is open to the progress 
of ideas. The substance of it, Christ and Him crucified, is 



Charge. 9 

the same always ; but the wisdom of God as displayed in 
the preached word, proves itself to be what Paul calls it, 
manifold, or many tinted, in that its methods are always open 
to the improvements and modifications suggested by the 
new conditions of successive ages. It is no reflection 
upon the ability and fidelity of your predecessors to say 
that there is yet much to be taught about preaching, not 
only on its spiritual and intellectual, but also on its 
physical side. 

While, therefore, your department shall stand as a 
bulwark of the faith, it is to have windows opening east 
and west, through which the flashing radiance of the new 
wisdom, and the mellower light of the old, shall alike have 
access. 

You will remember that the charge of a department in 
a denominational seminary, involves more than the daily 
instruction of successive classes. Your position is one 
which may fairly be expected to carry authority on the 
questions with which it is called specially to deal. A larger 
public than that of your lecture-room must be kept in 
view; and while the routine duties of the professorship 
must needs be exacting, yet the ideal, at least, of the 
professorship implies a margin both of attainment and 
of opportunity for independent study, out of which ought 
to grow, in due time, some contribution of permanent 
value to the students and teachers of sacred rhetoric 
everywhere. 

I need scarcely remind you that you will sustain towards 
the students a relation besides that of an instructor. 
These young men, while they will be taught by your 
lectures, will also be helped and stimulated by your 
personal friendship, and insensibly moulded by the char- 
acter of the Christian gentleman which shall reveal itself 
in your more familiar intercourse with them. They will be 
unlike most theological students, unlike most young men, 
for that matter, if they do not often need and crave the 
counsel and sympathy of a wise friend, even more than the 



io Charge. 

instructions of an accomplished teacher. You do not 
abandon the cure of souls in retiring from the pastorate, 
and you have only to be true to your own instincts and to 
the life-long habit of your ministry, to fill out this side of 
your professorship in a way which shall make many a 
future pastor call you blessed. 

I would not trench on the province of an inaugural 
discourse, yet I may be allowed a word as to the character 
of your instruction growing out of the peculiar juncture at 
which you assume these duties. You come to your chair 
at a time when the claims of the pulpit are squarely and 
defiantly challenged ; when preaching is regarded by not a 
few as an obsolete and superfluous thing ; when its leading 
position among gospel agencies is menaced by ceremonialism 
on the one hand, and by a cultured indifferentism on the 
other. We believe you will vindicate to your students the 
rightfulness of the claim which our Church has always 
made for the preaching of the Word as first among the 
means by which men are to be won to repentance and 
faith in the Lord Jesus. Granting that the foolishness of 
preaching is a fact now, as in Paul's time ; it is also a fact 
now, as in Paul's time, that God is pleased by the foolish- 
ness of preaching to save them that believe. As opposed to 
the affected contempt of modern culture for the pulpit, our 
knowledge of you leads us to expect that you will give no 
uncertain sound as to the preacher's right to take the 
position of an instructor in his specialty — the Word of 
God, — a right as well-grounded as that of a scientific 
specialist to instruct in chemistry or in physics. You will 
not be long in dispelling any possible false impressions 
growing out of the words " Sacred Rhetoric," to the effect 
that your department deals mainly with those tricks of 
oratory and graces of diction which command popular 
applause. In emphasizing the right of the trained preacher 
to instruct, you will equally emphasize instruction as 
especially a means to salvation and to holy living, and not 
as a sop to the philosophic intellect, or as an answer to the 



Charge. t i 

demand for literary and scientific novelties. You will 
vindicate the claim for accurate and extensive knowledge 
'and thorough training in the pulpit, but you will, at the 
same time, ever keep it before your students that, from the 
very confines of human knowledge on all sides, the lines 
converge to the Cross. You will stand as a bulwark against 
the popular demand upon the pulpit for entertainment, 
concession to which is treachery to our sacred calling, and 
makes mountebanks out of those whose hands touch the 
sacred mysteries of the Cross. 

The fact that you now pass, in some degree, out of the 
glare of publicity in which a city pastor's life is led, 
implies no diminution of responsibility, nor of the delicacy 
and importance of your work. The Church gives you the 
highest mark of her confidence in choosing you to assist in 
educating her teachers. Your. place now is at the springs of 
her power ; your influence upon her masses, though less 
direct, is to be wider ; you are to preach to scores of 
congregations where you have preached to one ; you will 
be none the less felt, now that you are to be in the persons 
and words of other teachers rather than in your own 
person and word ; you are to be heard in many a church 
yet unorganized, in many a pulpit where you will never 
stand, by many a soul who will be indebted to you for 
instruction and comfort and spiritual quickening, but who 
will never see your face, or perhaps know your name. 

It would not be strange if some sense of personal 
sacrifice attached for the time to this change of position. 
You have gloried in preaching, and have been knit to the 
pastorate by ties such as bind few men to that work. It 
implies no vanity that a man should be kindled and 
inspired by his weekly contact with a great congregation. 
Some one once said that a mark of a born preacher was 
that he never saw a pulpit without aching to get into it ; 
and such a preacher does not willingly abandon it. Yet, 
my brother, in this quieter sphere you will not be without 
inspirations. You will feel them as your special studies 



1 2 Charge. 

shall give you new and grander views of the scope of your 
work. They will come to you in the daily contact with 
consecrated youthful enthusiasm, as it shall seek your 
guidance along the lines of Christian thought and work. 
They will stir your deepest heart, as, year by year, you 
shall see the men whom you have helped to mould, going out 
to carry the Cross to the islands of the sea, beneath the 
palm shadows, to the frontiers of our civilization, to the 
quiet villages among the hills, and to the crowded cities : 
and they will be renewed again and again, as your faithful 
work shall come back to you in tidings of souls redeemed, 
Christian enterprise stimulated, solid character developed : 
as you shall see your pupils stepping to the front, 
girded with the power of the Spirit, good soldiers of Christ, 
and wise leaders in the Church of the living God. Dear 
brother, need I say that this opening vista of labor and of 
reward is a call to personal consecration, to holy living, to 
close walking with God, to the most earnest devotion, and 
to the strictest fidelity to your trust ? 

In the name of Christ and of His Church, then, we com- 
mit to you this solemn charge, with confidence that He who 
has enabled you to bless and honor the Church in the work 
of the pastorate, will make this last stage of your career 
the best and the most richly fruitful of all. We commend 
you to God and to the Word of His grace. We ask for 
you the gift of the Spirit of power, of love, and of a sound 
mind. " That good thing which is committed unto thee, keep 
by the Holy Ghost. Be strong in the grace that is in 
Christ Jesus, and the things which thou hast heard among 
many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men 
who shall be able to teach others also. Study to show 
thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to 
be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth;" and "may 
the God of peace that brought again from the dead our 
Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the 
blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in 
every good work to do His will, working in you that which 
is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom 
be glory for ever and ever." 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 



THOMAS S. HASTINGS, D.D. 



MINISTER AND HIS WORK. 



The chair of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology is 
between learning and life — to reconcile and harmon- 
ize the two. The tendency of learning is to isolate, 
and to disqualify for practical sympathy with common 
life. In the curriculum, both of the college and of 
the seminary, there is always the danger that the 
scholastic will absorb the human, so that in proporr 
tion to the gain in knowledge will be the loss in wis- 
dom and in practical facility and force. Never was 
the demand so great as now for the highest order of 
learning in the Christian ministry, and therefore never 
was the danger so great as now that the manhood of 
the students will not be levelled with their learning. 
There may be as much of real avarice in the getting 
of knowledge as there ever was in the getting of 
money ; and the blight and curse will be the same in. 
the one case as in the other. It is greed, not gold, 
that kills souls. It matters little what is the object 
of greed, whether it be wealth, honor, or knowledge, 
it is the selfishness in it that makes it corrosive and 



1 6 The* Minister and his Work. 

deadly. The more some men know, the less they are ; 
they bend and stagger under the load they carry, and 
cannot move or walk with manly freedom and spirit. 
Of one of the non-jurists Lord Macaulay wrote : 
" He had perused innumerable volumes in various 
languages, and had indeed acquired more learning 
than his slender faculties were able to bear. The 
small intellectual spark which he possessed was put 
out by the fuel." Knowledge should equip and not 
burden. It depends on the motive with which it is 
sought, and on the use to which it is put, whether 
scholarship shall be to the student power or paralysis. 
There can not be too much knowledge — the more- 
the better ; but there may be too little life. 

To level and assimilate the two, learning and life — 
that is the difficulty ; yet that is the necessity. The 
heart and the brain are peers ; and the throb of the 
one must keep time with that of the other, only, — the 
throb of the heart must be warmer and stronger than 
that of the brain. 

To guide and stimulate the students in the acquisi- 
tion of knowledge, is the work of my honored col- 
leagues. To instruct in the art of bringing that knowl- 
edge to bear in its full force on human life, is the 
work to which I have been called. It is a great work, 
and difficult, and one in which the teacher must, first 
of all, lose himself, that he may find the individuality 
of each student, and aid in securing to each separately 
the development of his best possibilities. The stu- 



The Minister and his Work. ly 

dents must be separated as well as classified, that the 
teacher may know and cultivate in each that which to 
him is natural. 

But what is it to be natural ? The ready and com- 
mon answer is, — "It is to be yourself." But that 
necessitates another question, " What is it to be your- 
self ?" This brings us directly to my theme : "Self 
— Its Meanings, and its Relations to the Character 
and to the Work of the Christian Minister." 

i. Self — What are its meanings ? Let us go 
back to the question just now asked, "What is it to 
be yourself ? " The word is ambiguous, and is often 
used without intelligent discrimination. There are 
two selves — the one hereditary and initial, the other 
ideal and ultimate. " Be yourself " — that must refer 
to the ideal self ; otherwise it enjoins inertia and for- 
bids progress. When Bourdaloue was probing the 
conscience of Louis XIV., applying to him the words 
of St. Paul, and intending to paraphrase them, " For 
the good that I would, I do not ; but the evil which 
I would not, that I do " — " I find two men in me " — 
the King interrupted the great preacher with the 
memorable exclamation, " Ah ! these two men — I 
know them well." Bourdaloue answered : " It is 
already something to know them, Sire ; but it is not 
enough — one of the two must perish." Now between 
these two selves — the one primary, the other ultimate 
— are all the aspiration and study, all the toil and 
battle of true and noble living. We start from and 



1 8 The Minister and his Work. 

with the one self, and move toward the other : — -from, 
because escape from self is the only salvation ; with, 
because in the primary self is, in part at least, the cap- 
ital upon which the business of life is conducted ; in 
it are the materials and implements and weapons for 
the work and the warfare. There is often confusion 
of mind in thinking and speaking of self, because 
this distinction is not made. To be natural — that 
may mean either to be your primary or your ultimate 
self. If the former, then it implies that original de- 
pravity shall have full sway : all the black drops in the 
blood shall be dominant ; it means that the original 
self, with its inherited and acquired tendencies, shall 
refuse culture, reject discipline, and defy rules. It \s> 
assumed that art and nature are antagonists, but 
really they are coadjutors. Art confronts nature dis- 
ordered and distracted by the deep inworking of sin. 
In nature, thus deranged, Art seeks to find the key- 
note whereto the lost harmonies may be readjusted. 
Discipline and rules aim at the natural, not at the 
artificial. But is the natural the real? or is it the 
ideal ? Our theology answers the question, and an- 
swers it peremptorily : The natural is the ideal, the 
ultimate;; it is not that which we have and are, but 
that which we pray and hope to have and to become. 
Individuality is sacred, but then it includes the possi- 
bilities, and not merely the actualities. No two nat- 
ures are alike, and yet all have a common origin and 
a common end. Made in the image of God, — be- 



The Minister and his Work. 19 

tvveen that beginning and the end stands God made 
in the image of man, requiring of each believing soul, 
and promising to each, a fuller image of God, and a 
more- complete likeness to God, as the only true con- 
summation of redeemed life. There are two ways of 
looking at the Christ, one of which is full of discour- 
agement, and the other full of lofty cheer and noblest 
hope. Castillo long ranked as the finest of Spanish 
artists. In his later years, when he first saw a Murillo, 
he studied the marvellous canvas long and earnestly, 
and then exclaimed, " Castillo is no more ! " That 
was the despair of egotism. When Corregio first 
looked upon a Raphael, thrilled with a sense of the 
high possibilities of his art, he exclaimed, " And I, too, 
am an artist ! " So you may look at the Christ, the 
superlative Man, and be overwhelmed with despair ; 
or you may see in Him not only what you ought to 
be, but rather what you shall be, and in sublime hope 
and with deepest meaning you may exclaim, — " And 
I, too, am a man ! " Not merely the imperative in 
the Christ, but also the promissive, our manhood 
needs to feel. And this points us forward, and calls 
us from the natural egotism of introspection to 
that outreaching of the soul, which finds hope and 
inspiration in the Great Object of our faith. 

I am already touching the boundaries of the second 
part of my subject. The needed discriminations 
have been made with reference to the meanings of 



20 The Mifiister arid his Work. 

self, so that the word will not be misunderstood in 
our further use of it ; and now we are to consider : 

2. The relatio?zs of self thus understood, to the 
character of the Christian minister . 

Personal character is the basis of power, influence, 
and success in the ministry. Quintilian gives this as 
Cato's significant definition: "An orator is a good 
man, skilled in speaking." Goodness is the vital 
thing ; it is the necessary foundation of sacred elo- 
quence. Spiritual power ultimates in character. What 
you are, limits what you say. An old mediaeval 
proverb puts this tersely : " If a man's life is light- 
ning, his words will be thunders."* Piety varies in 
quality quite as much as in degree. It may be hard, 
cold, formal, and dark, or it may be bright, warm, 
fresh, full of hope and joy, and so of all elements that 
are most persuasive and magnetic. If a man walk in 
the shadow of himself, it is because he walks with his 
back to the sun. If the life is mainly a communion 
with self, then it must be meagre and dark, for the 
true light is not in self, but in Christ. The vision of 
the soul must not turn in upon itself to study the size 
and quality of its own " spiritual retina " ; vision is not 
for introspection. Carlyle says, " Gaze steadily into 
your candle-light, and the sun himself will be invisi- 
ble." All the glory of power, of inspiration, of prom- 
ise is, not in self, but in the Christ. The primal self 



* "Cujus vita fulgor, verba tonitrua.' 



The Minister and his Work. 21 

is that one burden which no man can carry ; it must 
be utterly surrendered, or the soul be crushed with 
the awful load. But if self be surrendered for the 
Christ to carry, then the unburdened spirit will have 
liberty and elasticity, peace and power in the Lord. 
The piety of the ministry needs this elimination of 
self, and this full substitution of the Christ, in order 
to be of that fine and high quality which will be elo- 
quent and persuasive beyond any words which human 
lips can utter. We need manly piety in the ministry, 
free from the cringing and the groaning and the cant 
which come mainly of the intrusiveness of self ; not 
such piety, to borrow another's phrase, as is " always 
sending one to his mirror, that he may examine his 
moral toilet." We need such manhood — brave, broad, 
rich, strong, and tender — as can be had only by high 
fellowship with the one perfect manhood. In the true 
minister self is out of sight, and God and man fill the 
horizon ; God and man — God as motive, man as ob- 
ject. We are told of Phidias that "he carved like 
one who had seen Zeus ! " And we know that the 
one secret of the sublimity of Moses' manhood is, 
that " He endured as seeing Him who is invisible." 
It is noticeable that in all relations where the Divine 
and the human come together, the tendency of the 
former times was, so to bring the Divine to the front 
as almost to hide the human ; while the reaction of 
our times shows a tendency so to bring the human to 
the front as to hide the Divine. This is seen not 



22 The Minister and his Work. 

only in the treatment the Bible and the Christ have 
received, but also in the way in which the Christian 
ministry has been regarded. A just balance between 
the Divine and the human is that which is needed. 
The human writers may be recognized in the Holy 
Scriptures without making them less holy, — without 
imperilling their supreme authority as the infallible 
Word of God. The full and beautiful humanity in 
Jesus Christ maybe owned and felt without lessening 
our deep sense of His true Godhood. So in the min- 
istry, we may and should maintain its Divine author- 
ity ; and yet the minister should be most human in 
his attitude toward his fellow-men. This fine tribute, 
which Lowell paid to his friend Agassiz, one could 
wish might be fairly earned by every minister : 

" He was so human ! whether strong or weak, 

Far from his kind he neither sank nor soared, » 
But sate an equal guest at every board ; 

No beggar ever felt him condescend ; 

No prince presume ; for still himself he bare 
At manhood's simple level, and where'er 

He met a stranger, there he left a friend." 

The human and the Divine should so interblend in 
the ministerial character as to make it in the highest 
sense Christly. We must understand that self-culture 
means not only self-discipline, but also and equally 
self-denial ; not only self-development, but also and 
equally self-conquest. Pagan and classic wisdom 
culminated in the familiar Delphic motto, rvtidi 
(xeavrov ; but Christian wisdom started and continues 



The Minister and his Work. 23 

and conquers with this motto, TvtiQi Xpiarov. The 
difference between the two is radical and vital, and 
has to do with the very foundations of Christian 
character, determining alike its quality and its degree. 
Against "this saying of Juvenal, " E coelo descendit, 
rvtidt ffeavTov," Coleridge recorded his protest in 
these striking lines : 

Tvudi aeavrov — and is this the prime 

And heaven-sprung adage of the olden time ? 

Say, canst thou make thyself? Learn first that trade, 

Haply thou may'st know what thyself hast made. 

What hast thou, man, that thou dar'st call thine own ? 

What is there in thee, man, that can be known ? 

Dark fluxion, all unfixable by thought, 

A phantom dim of past and future wrought, 

Vain sister of the worm, life, death, soul, clod, 

Ignore thyself and strive to know thy God. 

If here it be objected that true humility, that 
radical virtue, can be cultivated only by self-knowl- 
edge ; the answer is easy. Humility comes not by 
introspection, but by that aspiration in which self is lost 
and " God is all and in all." In' Christian biography 
those are the best and humblest souls that have most 
looked up, and been most absorbed in God. The 
knowledge of self is the knowledge of the sinful and 
the fragmentary ; the knowledge of God is the 
knowledge of the perfect and the ultimate. Model, 
motive, inspiration, and power are all in God, and not 
in self. Character must root itself in the infinite ; 
its growth can not be self-fed or self-sustained. Self- 
lifting is out of the question as much spiritually as it is 



24 The Minister and his Work. 

physically ; we must lay hold on that which is outside 
and above us, if we would rise higher. Goethe says, 
" Die and become ; for so long as this is not accom- 
plished, thou art but a troubled guest upon an earth 
of gloom." St. Paul puts the matter in the most 
forcible way : " Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me." Egotism, self-seeking, self- 
consciousness, and all subtle shades of selfism are 
fatal to ministerial power. Above all men, the 
Christian minister needs that high and fine quality of 
character which comes only to the brain and heart 
that are freed of self and filled and fascinated with 
Christ. 

3. What has been said of the character of the 
Christian minister, leads us on to speak of the rela- 
tions of my theme to the ministerial work. 

The Christian minister — there are these elements in 
the composition : the man, the student, the preacher, 
the pastor. I have spoken of the man in treating of 
the character of the minister ; but there is one pre- 
liminary thing that belongs here. Enthusiasm — not 
merely emotional and fitful, but deep, principled 
enthusiasm — is necessary to all good and great work ; 
and no one needs it more than the minister, as 
student, preacher, and pastor. One must hide himself 
in Christ to find and feel the true enthusiasm for 
humanity ; you cannot find it by inlook, nor by out- 
look, but only by uplook. It comes not by the 
pathos of the appeal of man's deep want and woe ; 



The Minister and his Work. 25 

it comes not by the cold process of logic, or by the 
slow, calm method of thought ; no, no, this high 
enthusiasm comes only as you stand by the Cross of 
Jesus Christ ; for of all summits Calvary is the 
highest ; it is the most commanding and the most in- 
spiring view-point this side of heaven. There you see 
the two infinities, divine love and human need. 
There God is realized, and there man is realized ; 
God in His holiness, His condescension and com- 
passion — man in his awful guilt and peril. No 
humanitarian sentimentalism is thus induced, but a 
settled principled enthusiasm. And such enthusiasm 
will never burn out ; but it will consume all selfish 
ambitions, and give perpetual light and warmth and 
power. The soul thus kindled cannot hide behind 
ramparts nor cower in trenches ; it will go forth free, 
brave, and glad, and find that in Christian living the 
true defence is aggression. It has been remarked 
concerning the life of Jesus that " He was never 
guarding Himself, but alway invading the lives of 
others with His holiness. The force with which His 
character and love flowed out upon the world kept 
back more strongly than any granite wall of prudent 
caution could have done, the world from pressing in 
on Him. His life was like an open stream that keeps 
the sea from flowing into it by the eager force with 
which it flows down into the sea."* That covers a great 



' Sermons," Phillips Brooks, p. 182. 



26 The Minister a7id his Work. 

deal. Thus the personality of the minister can be a 
power only as it is not projected, but sunk and hidden 
by the earnestness with which he sees God and man. 
But the minister is not only a man, he is also a 
student ; he must be this, or he is nothing. The 
minister who is indolent, unstudious, and unscholarly, 
dishonors God, discredits the ministry, and destroys 
himself. But with what purpose and spirit should the 
minister study ? The knowledge we need is not all 
in books, in men, or in things ; but it is primarily in 
Christ Jesus, the incarnate Truth. St. Paul had 
behind him all the treasures of classic literature ; 
behind him were the Academy and the Porch ; 
behind him were Socrates and Plato and Aristotle ; 
while he himself was rich in the spoils of the splendid 
schools of Tarsus ; and yet, hear him : " I count all 
things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge 
of Christ Jesus, my Lord." More to me, in depth of 
significance, than all his noble scholarship, is the fact 
that when Hermann Witsius entered upon his pro- 
fessorship in Ley den in 1698, the theme of his 
inaugural was " De Theologo Modesto." The 
preacher must be a student, not to satisfy a scholarly 
appetite, not to gain for the sake of gain, not to 
secure for himself respect and admiration, not to 
serve the Church, the school, the system, but to 
honor God in the salvation and service of man. 
The Bible must have the first place among the 
preacher's books. It must be not only harvested and 



The Minister and his Work. 27 

gleaned on its surface, but mined in its depths. The 
student must be saturated with its spirit, equipped 
with its tools, and armed with its weapons. He must 
find in God's Word the word for the people, that he 
may come before them, and go among them so rich 
in Divine treasures that he may be alway giving to 
the hungry Immortality around him which is ever 
crying out for the bread of heaven. In many ways, 
and most absolutely, does the level of the study 
determine the level of the pulpit. As water will not 
rise higher than its source, so is it with the spiritual 
power of the preacher ; its source, under God, is in 
his study ; and that must be not a library only, but 
also a sanctuary, with its pulpit, its altar, and its 
Shekinah alway invisible, but alway real and dominant. 
In the minister, both as a man and as a student, there 
must be transparent simplicity and purity, unmixed 
with earthliness and selfism, so that the light which is 
from above, may penetrate the depths of his soul, to 
be reflected to the minds and hearts of men. Mr. 
Ruskin,* by an elaborate and convincing argument, 
shows that on clear water near the eye there are and 
can be no shadows, — no shadows of cloud, mountain, 
or forest, but only reflections. Upon turbid and 
muddy waters, like those of the Rhine, because there 
is so much earthy matter in them, there are indeed 
shadows ; but never upon waters that are clear. How 



* "Arrows of the Chase," p. 191 sq. 



2 8 The Minister and his Work. 

true that is of men ! There are no shadows on child- 
like and transparent souls, they only reflect the 
glories of heaven ; but turbid souls, full of self and 
earthliness, they, like muddy waters, are always 
darkly shadowed. 

Now let us follow the student to the pulpit and 
think of him as a preacher. Even before he begins 
to speak, unconscious influence exhales from his look, 
his attitude, his whole manner. At once he concili- 
ates and attracts, or provokes antagonism. If he 
show in his look a modest respect for his hearers, and 
a becoming sense of the solemnity and responsibility 
of his position, the hearts of the people will open 
toward him ; but any sign of self-confidence or of 
self-consciousness will break the spell. The people 
will hear all and bear anything when they see that the 
preacher has not come before them to dogmatize or 
to display himself, but is intent only on their good. 
I have tried to show that the personal character of 
the preaching should have this two-foldness — God 
so realized, and man so realized, that self is lost in 
their absorbing claims and interests. I need not fur- 
ther urge that the preacher should come to the pulpit 
with a sermon carefully and studiously prepared, the 
best fruit of his prayers and studies. I shall presume 
that enough has been said with reference to the mat- 
ter of discourse to admit of my speaking only of 
the manner. It is due to Christ, in whose name we 
preach ; it is due to the truth ; it is due to the people 



The Minister and his Work. 29 

that the Word should lose nothing, but gain as much 
as possible by the manner of its presentation. It is 
said of the times of the Rennaissance that " Falsehood 
in a Ciceronian dialect had no opposers, truth in 
patois no listeners."* It is saddening to the last de- 
gree to see so many in the ministry who, though ex- 
cellent and scholarly men, fail utterly to command 
the attention of the people, simply because, though 
they know what to say, they do not know how to say 
it ; they have absolutely no culture of voice or manner. 
The common neglect of such culture is marvellous 
and unaccountable. Now and then, but very rarely, 
one hears preaching which is nothing but rhetoric and 
elocution. It is needless to say that such preaching 
is beneath contempt. Nothing but rhetoric and 
elocution ! It reminds me of this withering sarcasm 
with which Thackeray disposes of George IV. : — " I 
try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, 
padding, stays, a coat with frogs, and a fur collar, a 
star and blue ribbon, a pocket-handkerchief prodigi- 
ously scented, one of Truefitt's nutty brown wigs 
reeking with oil, a set of teeth, a huge, black stock, 
underwaistcoats, more underwaistcoats, and then — 
nothing."f 

But on that point I need say no more in this pres- 
ence and in this scholarly atmosphere. 



* "Stones of Venice," III. 61. 
t " The Four Georges," p. 90. 



30 The Minister and his Work. 

In general, as it has been well and often declared, 
the preacher's manner should always be such that the 
hearers will not think of it or of him, but only of the 
truth. Yet in order to this, which is certainly the 
perfection of manner, there must be the most careful 
and judicious culture. Mr. Emerson says : " The 
poet Saadi tells us that a person with a disagreeable 
voice was reading the Koran aloud, when a holy man, 
passing by, asked what was his monthly stipend. He 
answered, ' Nothing at all.' ' But, then, why do you 
take so much trouble ? ' He replied, ' I read for the 
sake of God.' The other rejoined, ' For God's sake 
do not read, for if you read the Koran in this manner 
you will destroy the splendors of Islamism ! ' " * How 
much have the Bible and the Hymn-Book and Chris- 
tian truth suffered from men who neither know how 
to read or speak ! But when, in the same connection, 
Mr. Emerson says : " In the Church I call him only 
a good reader who can read sense and poetry into any 
hymn in the Hymn-Book," we may well question the 
fairness of such a test under the existing condition of 
our Hymnology. How much there is in the voice 
that betrays, like the countenance, the character, and 
the degree of refinement and culture ! Socrates said 
to a youth distinguished for personal beauty, " Speak, 
that I may see thee ! " There are voices that grate 
and grind and rasp the sensibilities ; and there are 



* " Letters and Social Aims," p. 108. 



The Minister and his Work. 31 

those that court and caress the ear, and are sweet as 
Apollo's lute. There may be smiles or tears in a 
voice. One need not go far to detect what Haw- 
thorne calls "The chronic croak, the voice dyed 
black."* Fine speaking is the broadest and finest of 
the fine-arts ; it is architecture, music, statuary, and 
painting, all in one. It is architecture, for it has con- 
struction, form, proportion, symmetry, perspective ; it 
is music that thrills and lifts souls like a noble sym- 
phony ; it is statuary, for it has pose, attitude, gesture, 
which the cold marble might well envy ; it is paint- 
ing, for it pictures with every variety of color, and 
every delicacy of touch, what pencil and canvas can 
never at their best portray. Surely this broadest and 
finest of the fine-arts deserves much of that patient study 
and laborious devotion which are so readily and gener- 
ously conceded to all the other arts. I know well 
the common objection which has been so decisive, 
and has wrought such wide-spread mischief in the 
past. We are told that all culture which has respect 
to manner in the pulpit, will make only artificial 
speakers ; and the preacher above all things should be 
himself, and should be natural. The utter folly of 
that objection will at once be apparent, if you will 
here recall and apply the distinctions made in the 
early part of this address. "To be yourself," in the 
sense of this objection, is to be certainly and entirely 



' House of the Seven Gables," p. 146. 



32 The Minister and his Work. 

wrong, i. e., as already indicated, it is to be just what 
your native depravity may make you; "to be your- 
self " in the true and higher sense, as I tried to show, 
is to work and to struggle from your primal self 
toward your ideal self. So also to "be natural " you 
must reach a high and distant goal. It is very true 
that, at the first, rules produce constraint and arti- 
ficiality, but with labor and patience they settle into 
principles and form habits, and so are merged into 
what seem like intuitions. Rules are rounds of the 
ladder by which one climbs ; when he has reached the 
height, he leaves the ladder, but keeps the elevation. 
Rules are masters until by obedience of them they are 
converted into servants. And that transformation is 
accomplished only when you have so wrought them 
into your own nature that you conform to them un- 
consciously. And then, and so, you are at length 
yourself and have become at last natural. The old 
Latin saying is here abundantly true, " Summa ars 
artem superare." * 

A minister is to be not only a preacher, but a 
pastor. In order to this he should never be a place- 
seeker. The world is alway full of open doors for 
honest and self-sacrificing workers ; doors which 
Christ opens for such workers, and which no man 
can shut. There is a quaint old proverb that is 
pertinent and suggestive here, "A stone that is fit for 

* This is better than the kindred saying : " Artis est celare 
artem." 



The Minister and his Work, 33 

the wall will not be left in the roadway." The self- 
seeker may find a place, but he cannot fill or keep it. 
Let the place find you, and you will both fit and fill 
it. There is wisdom in this saying of Confucius, " I 
am not concerned that I have no place ; I am con- 
cerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not 
concerned that I am not known ; I seek to be worthy 
to be known." The pastoral relation is one of the 
most delicate, beautiful, and delightful, as it is one of 
the most difficult, laborious, and responsible among 
all the relations of life. It is fruitful only of pain 
and bitter disappointment to the self-seeker ; but to 
him who, in self-abnegation, seeks Christ and souls, 
it is fruitful of the purest joys and of the finest and 
highest rewards. How true in all these relations we 
have been considering is the Master's word, " He 
that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his 
life for my sake shall find it." 

In conclusion I cannot resist the temptation to 
repeat the words of the gifted Robertson, in one of 
his last published sermons : " The minister of Christ 
is but a herald to prepare His coming ; and then, and 
only then, has he done his work when he has en- 
deavored to detach trust and admiration from himself 
and to fasten them upon Jesus Christ ; and when 
he feels that he is becoming every day less and less 
necessary to those whom he has taught, because he has 
imparted to them all he knows and led them to the 
everlasting fountain which shall never be exhausted. 
L 2* & 



34 The Minister and his Work. 

The very spirit of the Christian ministry consists in 
these blessed words, ' He must increase, but I must 
decrease ' ; I fulfil my course ; it will soon be done ; 
I point to Christ."* 

Suffer me a few words of personal allusion. To 
be associated with such honored men as my col- 
leagues, so widely known, revered, and loved ; to 
occupy a chair which the rare and symmetrical, the 
gifted and graceful spirit of Dr. William Adams 
dignified and adorned, is a responsibility before 
which one might well shrink. If it did not seem 
to be the call of God that has summoned me hither, 
I would dare to be afraid, and to refuse the 'high 
task which is before me. God help me to seek not 
myself, but His glory in the good of those He may 
aid me to teach. 



"The Human Race, and other Sermons," p. 113. 



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